THE EXPLOITATION OF THE FORESTS
Manual labour on the _obrajes_--The land of the _banados_
and the agricultural cantons of Corrientes--The timber-yards
of the Chaco and the tannic-acid works of the Parana--The
exploitation of the _mate_--The forestry industry and
colonization.
From the Andes of Tucuman and Salta to the banks of the upper Parana
in the province of Misiones the north of Argentina is now a vast
timber-yard for the exploitation of the forests. It resounds everywhere
with the axe. This exploitation of the forest is of early origin on
the river; in the eighteenth century Buenos Aires was supplied with
wood from the Parana. In the western Chaco the difficulty of transport
by land retarded the development of the forestry industry. The only
market for the timber of Tucuman was the Andean region. It was not sent
to Mendoza after the beginning of the nineteenth century, when the
willow was acclimatized in the oases of Cuyo. Below Rosas the wood of
the _quebracho_ was at first taken in waggons from Santiago to Buenos
Aires, but this traffic ceased when the river-route was reopened,
and we do not find it resumed until recent times, when railways were
constructed.
The outer fringe of the forest and the scrub where the industry has
had to find labour, is inhabited by a very sparse pastoral population.
There are, however, besides the thinly populated districts of the
farms, certain busy hives which lend animation to the scrub. These
over-populated cantons are districts of cultivation by _banados_, or
the cultivation of flood-lands. There is constant intercourse between
these ancient centres of creole life and the timber-yards of the
forest. The forestry industry recruits its workers there, on temporary
contracts. The wages paid are brought back to these centres and spent
there. They help to maintain social groups of an archaic type, which
the meagreness of their production would otherwise doom to extinction.
The _banados_ are scattered over the range of all the sierras within
the limits reached by the torrents from the mountains before they are
lost. They also stretch along the two rivers that are considerable
enough to cross the scrub, the Salado and the Dulce. The course of
the Bermejo, where the natural conditions are much the same, lies
outside the sphere of primitive creole colonization. The tilled lands
are not continuous on the Salado or the Dulce. There are no _banados_
wherever the bed of the river is enclosed by high banks which prevent
flooding. The course of the Salado threads together, in the manner of
a rosary, three main groups of _banados_ below 26 deg. S. lat., (Matoque
and Boqueron) between 27 deg. and 28 deg. S. lat. (Brea), and between 28
deg. and 29 deg. S. lat. (Le Bracho and Navicha). But the classic country
of the _banados_, where they cover the widest extent and sustain the most
considerable body of population, is the interior delta of the Rio Dulce
below Santiago del Estero, in the departments of Loreto, Atamisqui, and
Salavina.
Santiago is situated almost at the top of it. In its upper part the
Rio Dulce is enclosed between high clay cliffs (department of the Rio
Hondo). Below Santiago the river seems to run to the top of a sort
of flattened alluvial cone, over which it wanders. Instances of the
migration of rivers during the historical period are plentiful in the
north of the Argentine plain. The scrub is scored east of the Salado
with a network of dry beds, the edges of which gradually disappear as
the vegetation extends over them. But there is no other part where
the erratic nature of the waters is so marked, the vagabondage so
considerable, as in this section of the basin of the Rio Dulce. The
small towns of Atamisqui and Salavina, which lived on the waters of the
Dulce, were suddenly ruined in 1825, when the river, in consequence
of a particularly violent flood, turned away to the south and lost
itself in the Salinas Grandes. A canal was dug in 1897 to irrigate the
district of Loreto, on the left bank of the Dulce, but the entrance
was badly protected, and the flood of 1901 swept into it, and, guided
by it, reached the bed it had abandoned a century before, going
south-eastward toward Atamisqui. That town and Salavina recovered their
prosperity, while it was necessary to abandon the farms on the Rio des
Salines, which now has water only during high floods. Actual beds, old
beds that are always ready to serve again, and traces of canals changed
and cut by the stream, form a great network in the midst of the plain;
and the flood rolls to one side or the other according to the road open
to it, and the facility with which the various elements of the network
lend themselves to the passage of the water. Such is the land of the
_banados_.
You enter it to-day at Loreto station, where the line from Santiago
to Frias approaches within a few miles of it. This station is erected
in the midst of the arid _monte_, and owes its existence to the
neighbouring _banados_. Turning eastward from the railway, as soon
as one has crossed the broad, sandy bed of the Rio des Salines, one
finds oneself in the heart of the _banados_ farms. The road passes
between hedges (_cercas_), over the top of which one sees the green of
the wheat and lucerne. The plots are very small: gardens rather than
fields. In clearing the ground they have preserved the best-situated
trees, and the light foliage gives a useful shade to the crops. The
crown of the _algarrobas_ rises everywhere above the top of the hedges.
The fields do not cover the whole area of the annual inundations.
They are confined to the part where the flood is fertilizing; where
it leaves behind it a fine, useful clay which keeps the store of
moisture for several months. In other places the current is too rapid.
It furrows the soil, leaves large holes in it like the _lones_ in the
flood-area of the Rhone, and sweeps away the barriers; or the water
brings sterile sand which it deposits in long stretches; or again, if
it is not drained away in time and evaporates on the spot, it deposits
the salts it contains, and the land, looking as if it had a white
leprosy, becomes unfit for vegetation.
The floods begin in summer, during November or December. They are
caused by the rain-storms in the Tucuman district, and are very
irregular. Some of the houses are evacuated, and others are protected
by walls of earth, which are raised from hour to hour according to the
rise of the waters. Behind these walls the people await the abatement
of the flood. When the mud which is left behind has the proper
consistency, they till it and sow wheat. The wheat grows in the winter,
and is harvested in November quickly, so that the fresh flood may not
overtake it.
The caprices of the flood compel them frequently to change the sites of
their houses and fields. The ancient village of Loreto was evacuated
after a flood, and is now merely a mass of deserted ruins. Round the
naked trunks of the _algarrobas_, killed by excessive deposits of
sand or salt, are uniform colonies of plants of the same age and the
same species, which invade the area where the adult scrub has been
destroyed. The mill has been rebuilt less than a mile away, and has not
lost its customers, who have raised their _ranchos_ some distance away.
The insecurity of the plots has prevented the development of small
ownership. The farmers are tenants of the ranches, which stretch from
the river to a considerable distance in the interior.
The use of _banados_ for agriculture is of long standing. It probably
goes back to the pre-Columbian period. Father Dobritzhoffer, who
is the first to refer clearly to it, compares the Rio Dulce to the
Nile[44]; and in point of fact, the _banados_ have some resemblance
to farming in Pharaonic Egypt, while there is nothing like them in
the irrigated zones of the Andean valleys. The _banados_ were then
devoted to the cultivation of wheat and pumpkins. The pumpkin, which
is of American origin, had not yet been eliminated by wheat, which
was introduced by the Spaniards. The wheat produced in the _banados_
maintained a fairly active export trade at the beginning of the
nineteenth century, and the _banados_ were at times called, with some
exaggeration, the "granary of the Vice-royalty." It is difficult to
trace accurately the movements of the population of the _banados_
because of the constant changes of the administrative areas in the
province of Santiago. The total population of the province is not now
more than three per cent. of the total population of Argentina, but its
comparative importance was much greater in the middle of the nineteenth
century (nearly eight per cent. at the census of 1861). The departments
of Loreto, Atamisqui, and Salavina on the Rio Dulce, which live mainly
on the estates of the _banados_, comprised 46,000 inhabitants in 1861,
and only 43,000 in 1895. The Woodbine Parish map and Hutchinson's
description clearly give one an impression of a dense population in the
area of the _banados_. I refer elsewhere to the antiquity and constancy
of the streams of temporary immigration which spread the population of
the _banados_ over a large part of the territory of Argentina.[45] The
temporary emigration of the Santiaguenos is distributed amongst most
of the provinces of central and northern Argentina, but it is chiefly
of interest in connection with the frontier region. The Santiagueno is
a woodman above all else, and the forest area has the advantage over
the other labour-markets of wanting workers at all seasons, summer or
winter, whereas the sugar-cane harvest at Tucuman and the harvest in
the south only last a few months. They emigrate from the _banados_
to Tucuman in May; to Cordoba and Santa Fe in October, November and
December; but to the forests of the Chaco all the year round.
[44] _Historia de Abiponibus._
[45] See the chapter on population.
[Illustration: THE LAND OF THE BANADOS.
_On the Rio Dulce, near Loreto, in the dry season. Its actual bed,
excavated at a recent date by a flood in soft clay, is not yet
stable._
Photograph by the Author.]
[Illustration: LORETO: FARMING BY INUNDATION.
_In the zone of the scrub, where the floods of the Rio Dulce spread.
The interior delta of the Rio Dulce is one of the earliest centres of
population in Argentina._ Photograph by the Author.
PLATE IX. To face p. 100.]
Apart from the _banados_ of the Dulce and the Salado, the province of
Corrientes contains the main reservoir from which the timber industry
drew its manual workers. Just as at Santiago del Estero, one finds
at Corrientes also the opposition between agricultural and breeding
districts which is so common in the older colonized regions of South
America. The _estancieros_ (ranchers), who are breeders, are the
masters of Corrientes, but the line of low hills of sand and red
clay, punctuated by lagoons, which crosses the north-western corner
of the province, is not subject to their domination. There the land
is subdivided; there are once more fields. Tobacco was an article of
export for this fraction of Corrientes, especially after the political
isolation of Paraguay, the chief producer of tobacco in the nineteenth
century. During the whole of the first half of the nineteenth century
the tobacco-buyers travelled all over Corrientes after the harvest, in
January and February. The fertile soil, moreover, with a mild climate
in which tropical plants flourish as well as those of the temperate
zone, provides the elements of a local comfort which is complete in
itself. Here again agricultural colonization has created a relatively
dense nucleus of population, capable of great increase. Although the
administrative divisions do not exactly correspond with the natural
divisions, the unequal distribution of the population in Corrientes
is made plain by the figures given in the census of 1895. The density
rises in the agricultural areas to eight inhabitants per square
kilometre, in the department of Bellavista; ten at San Cosma; fourteen
at Lomas; thirty at San Roque. It is only between one and two in the
purely pastoral departments (Concepcion and Mercedes).
Corrientes also has its forests, and in these we find most of the
species of the forests of the Chaco, in straight lines, along the
water-courses, and in somewhat larger patches on the tablelands which
separate the lower valleys near the Parana. They at first supplied the
Curupai bark which was used in the Corrientes tanneries. The yards for
the construction of river-boats emigrated from Paraguay to Corrientes
at the beginning of the nineteenth century, at the same time and for
the same reasons as the tobacco trade. The exploiting of the red
_quebracho_ did not begin until about 1850. In 1887 Virasoro relates
that fifty ships are engaged in loading with Nandubai timber on the
banks of the Rio Corrientes and transporting it to Rosario.[46] Born on
the left bank of the Parana, the forestry industry emigrated toward the
end of the century to the right bank, whither the workers of Corrientes
followed it.
[46] Val. Virasoro, "Los esteros y lagunas del Ibera" in _Bol.
Instit. Geog. Argent._ (vi. 1887; pp. 305-31).
We find the same movement further north, on the Paraguay. The
exploitation of the woods is in that case a very old industry on
the tributaries of the left bank. D'Azara draws attention to its
importance.[47] Robertson found, when he went from Corrientes to
Asuncion in 1814, a population of wood-cutters in the marshy belt near
the river. During floods they took refuge in the agricultural cantons
of the frontier on high ground, where they were well received. It
seems, then, that wood-cutting was already a seasonal industry at this
time. The exploitation of the forests is now rapidly invading the right
bank, which was long abandoned to the wild Indians.
[47] _Diario de la navegacion y reconocimiento del Rio
Tibicuari_ (Coll. de Angelis, vol. ii.).
* * * * *
The Santiaguenos and Correntinos do not mix. The two zones of expansion
and of forestry, of which they are the pioneers, are independent of
each other. The _quechua_, which is the language of the _banados_ of
the Rio Dulce, is spoken in the timber-yards of the Chaco de Santiago;
the _guarani_, the language of Corrientes and the Paraguay, is most
common along the river, in the Chaco de Santa Fe. Their respective
spheres will not come into touch with each other until the Quimili
branch of the Central Norte Railway, which comes from the Santiago
province, joins the line of penetration at Resistencia, on the Parana,
in the west.
The forestry industry of the interior and that of the river-districts
differ not only in the character of the workers, but in their
organization and their market. The variety of red _quebracho_ which
is exploited in the west is not quite the same as the variety that is
found in the east. Each has a name of its own--_quebracho santiagueno_
and _quebracho chaqueno_. The former contains ten per cent. of tannin,
the latter thirty per cent. The former is cut down for timber, the
latter in order to extract the tannic acid. The one is sold in
Argentina, and the other sent abroad.
The working of the timber at Santiago has remained in the hands of a
number of small capitalists and contractors who do not own the land
and do not work there. They are content to buy in small amounts and
according to the demand at the moment, the right to exploit the forests
(_derecho de monte or derecho de lena_). The trunks of exceptionally
large _quebracho_ provide logs that are sold by cubic measurement, but
the district of the _quebracho santiagueno_ mainly exports sleepers.
_Quebracho_ sleepers have been used in constructing the railways, both
narrow and broad gauge, during the last twenty years on the Pampa.
Tall and thin trees make telegraph posts; the smaller branches make
stakes for wire fences. In parts of the bush where there is no red
_quebracho_, the _retamo_ is used, to make posts for enclosures, and
also the white _quebracho_, which is sold in round logs. Finally,
the forests provide wood for fuel. The works at Tucuman, and the
locomotives over a good part of the land, use wood-fuel. The wood of
the red _quebracho_, if left for some years in the yards where the
sleepers are made and is rid of the sap-wood, which rots and falls
out--the _lena campana_--is excellent fuel. Charcoal is cheaper to
transport than the wood, and can therefore be sent farther over the
whole prairie district. It is made in the _monte_, along all the
railways, and especially in the thinner forests on the edge of the
prairie.
The forestry of the interior is unstable as well as scattered and
primitive. The equipment--saws that are easily taken down and set
up--is not costly, and does not require much capital. When one canton
of the forest has been exhausted, the saws are taken down and removed.
The cuttings are not made in such a way as to allow the forest to
recover, and so permit a continuous exploitation. Everything of any
value is taken. The _quebracho_ is, moreover, a tree of slow growth.
The forestry industry has at times returned, after an interval, to land
that had been stripped, but that is not because they had planted a new
generation of trees. It is because it became profitable, as the state
of the market and the cost of transport changed, to cut down the small
trees which had not been considered good enough on the earlier occasion.
When the master _obrajero_ removes, he is followed by the greater part
of the workers. But to induce them to emigrate, or to recruit cutters
in the _banados_ who will agree to work in remote or new districts,
he has to be liberal and offer higher wages. Hence the conditions
of work and the rate of wage are not the same in every part of the
forest. The oldest area of working, which is crossed by the Central
Cordoba, between the provinces of Catamarca and Santiago del Estero,
has a surplus of good workers. On the other hand, the _obrajeros_ of
the valley from San Francisco to Jujuy, where the exploitation is more
recent, have only a moderate amount of labour at their command. The
returns are not higher there than in the south, though the forests
are incomparably denser and richer. It has been very expensive to
bring about a continuous stream of immigration toward the main region
of forest work, which is now called the Chaco, along the railway that
starts from Anatuya and goes about 130 miles further north. As the
worker is on piece-work, the price per sleeper when the work was begun
on the Chaco had to be double, on the Anatuya line, what was paid in
the older line from Santiago to Frias, close to the _banados_.
The work is profitable only within a short distance from the railways.
Waggon transport raises the price rapidly. Moreover, the forestry
industry is just as dependent on the railways for provisions as it is
for the carriage of its wood. The _obraje_ has no source of food-supply
on the spot. The marshy estates which begin to spread in the area of
irrigation-canals at Banda, eastward of Santiago del Estero, supply
only their customers at Anatuya and the Chaco line. Sometimes the
railway has to bring water as well as food. Over a great part of the
Chaco de Santiago there is no running water, and the underground sheets
are little known, or inaccessible, or salty. The _obraje_ is a land of
thirst. In order to meet the demand for water they dig reservoirs like
the _represas_ on the ranches, which are filled by the rains. But as
soon as the dry season sets in they become stagnant green pools, and
the men have to rely on waggon-cisterns.
While the Chaco de Santiago is now a democracy of small _obrajeros_ and
contractors, the eastern Chaco, along the Parana, has quite a different
type of society. It is entirely in the hands of the big tannic-acid
factories, where the _quebracho_ trunks are stripped and boiled, and
their sap is concentrated in a viscous resin. The lofty chimneys of
these works rise above the forest at intervals. Here the work assumes
a capitalistic and industrial character which it has not in other
places. It is controlled by powerful concerns, highly organized, which
conduct it on a pre-arranged plan. It is true that the works do not
deal with the entire output of _quebracho_,[48] but they almost control
the market, even as regards the unworked wood which is exported, and
they reserve a good deal of it for their branches in Europe. In order
to secure the heavy loans which the works represent, the companies
that have built them have been obliged to take over large forests,
and they have come to own these. The concentration of the area in
their hands goes on daily, and the number of companies is reduced by
amalgamation or by the purchase of rival concerns and their estates. On
the territory of the Chaco, where the administration of public lands
was in the hands of the Federal Government, some precautions were taken
to prevent the monopoly of the country; but the forests of the province
of Santa Fe belong entirely to two firms.
[48] It is more and more necessary to deal with the extract of
the _quebracho_ on the spot the further north one goes toward
the interior of the continent because the freights to the
exporting ports rise higher and higher.
The eastern Chaco has received from Europe, not only the capital that
was needed for the construction of works, but also a number of workers,
either for administration or for technical direction. These have proved
more exacting than the creoles of the Santiago saw-mills. Beside most
of the works there are now comfortable villas and brick towns for the
workers. The expense was quite prudently incurred, as the industry is
less erratic in this region. A tannic-acid factory cannot be removed
like a saw-mill. When the timber-supply is exhausted in the district,
the works gets its material from a distance, as long as the freightage
permits. It depends on the railway, not only for the carriage of its
products, as the saw-mills do, but for the supply of raw material.
The works are not all equally wealthy. They are scattered over about
ten degrees of latitude, north of 30 deg. S. lat., within reach of the
river, which keeps them in communication with the world, and at the
same time has enabled them to tackle the full breadth of the forest.
The _quebracho_ is particularly abundant north of Santa Fe and south
of the Argentine part of the Chaco, where it is the life and soul of
the forest. The works which have been set up there, in the midst of the
denser forests, have plenty of capital, and this enables them to nurse
their supplies and buy timber at a distance. The forest is still almost
virginal at their gates, so that they have a long future in front of
them. On the other hand, the oldest works, on the southern fringe of
the forest, and that of Corrientes, on the left bank of the Parana, are
already paralysed for want of timber.
The works are all at a short distance from the river; not only for
convenience of exporting their products, but because this is the only
part of the Chaco where one can find fresh water. And the tannic-acid
factory needs a great deal of fresh water. Along the river, in a belt
about thirty to sixty miles wide, we find a permanent hydrographic
network such as is found nowhere else on the plain. It consists of long
series of marshes covered with rushes (_canadas_), and in places they
become at their mouths regular streams with well defined beds. The
underground water also is generally fresh and plentiful, whether it is
due to the abundant rain or to infiltration from the Parana, and many
of the works have successfully bored for it. In these parts one suffers
from too much water as frequently as from thirst. On these immense and
almost horizontal surfaces the water spreads from the _canadas_ over
the whole forest. The railway, and even the houses, then stand out of
a sheet of stagnant water, which takes months to disappear. Trunks
which are badly placed, lying in the stations to be removed--sometimes,
according to the market, lying there for years--are half buried in the
mud. The waggons find it hard to move in the roads. Mules, which pay
very well in the dry forests of the west, could not make the effort
that is required here, and they use oxen--the finest beasts for a muddy
country. The long-horned, lean creole cattle drag the waggons with
difficulty, and a _correntino_, with long slender legs, shod with mud,
guides and urges them, looking like a crane with his slow and cautious
steps. The work of these drivers is much harder than that of the
wood-cutters. They earn nearly twice as much, and it is the difficulty
of getting enough men for this work that keeps down production.
The importance and stability of the large works has fixed the labour
market on the right bank of the Parana, and there is no need to go to
Corrientes to look for men. They come of their own accord. A daily
service of small steamers brings them to all the ports which dispatch
_quebracho_. The left bank, on Argentine territory, has also no hiring
centre, such as there still are at Asuncion and Concepcion in Paraguay.
Even on its own land the works leaves the working of the forest to
contractors, from whom it buys the timber. But the _obrajeros_, whether
they work in the company's forests or their own, are very dependent
upon the works. The contracts vary according as they are owners or
otherwise; according to whether they undertake to deliver the timber at
the stations or leave it where it is felled; and according to whether
they have the requisite oxen and waggons or have to loan these from the
company. They draw advances from the company, and, on the other hand,
they pledge themselves to purchase what they require for their workers
at the company's stores. The profit of these sales increases the
revenue of the works. The company monopolizes all trade, both import
and export. It exercises an absolute sovereignty over the forest.
It has merely deigned to grant the railway company space enough to
construct its lines and its stations.
The last forestry centre in modern Argentina is in the province
of Misiones on the upper Parana. Posadas is its chief station, and
protects its southern outlet. Its influence extends beyond the
Argentine frontier, over a small part of Brazil and Paraguay. In
Misiones there are two types of forest, which differ a good deal from
each other, while neither resembles the _quebracho_ forest. One is the
forest of araucarias (_pinos_) which covers the elevated tablelands
at a height above 2,000 feet. The other is the tropical forest, rich
in essences and of perennial vegetation, which fills the bottoms and
slopes of the valleys. The pine, which is also much worked on the
Brazilian tableland, yields an excellent white wood, suitable instead
of the northern pine. It would find a ready market at Buenos Aires,
but it has never been worked on Argentine territory because of the
great distance of the woods from a navigable river. On account of its
position on the tableland the araucaria has to wait for the railways
of some future date.[49] As to the leafy tropical forest it includes
a number of useful varieties (_timbo_, _lapacho_, _etc._), but the
most esteemed of all is the cedar. Its wood is rose-coloured, scented,
and fine-grained, and very suitable for furniture. At the time of
D'Orbigny's travels the inhabitants of Corrientes were looking out for
cedars from the mountains brought down the river when in flood. The
_obrajes_ of cedar-wood now extend twenty miles or so on the Argentine
bank, and forty miles in the Paraguay bank, which is more even and
better for transport. The trunks are floated in rafts down to Posadas;
as the cedar, which is less dense than the _quebracho_, not only
floats, but is improved by parting with sap in the water. At Posadas
the rafts are taken to pieces, and the trunks are delivered to the
saw-mills.
[49] In Brazil the saw-mills for the araucarian pines are
established along the Sao Paolo-Rio Grande Railway.
But timber is not the chief forest industry in Misiones, as it is on
the Chaco. Beside the _obraje_ in the forest there is the _yerbal_,
a works for dealing with the _mate_ (_Ilex paraguayensis_). It
is well known that an infusion of _mate_ (a kind of tea) is an
important element in the food of the western States of South America.
Gathering the leaves of the _mate_ has been a profitable occupation
for centuries: a unique instance, perhaps, in the forest industries
of South America. It has never been interrupted, though it has often
changed its locality.
The plantations made by the Jesuits were abandoned when the
missionaries were dispersed. After the close of the eighteenth century
Paraguay became the chief area of production. Villa Rica seems to have
been the most prolific centre of the _yerba_. After that date, however,
the Jujuy basin, further north, was exploited, and the _yerbateros_,
who came from Curuguati, advanced eastward as far as the Falls of
the Guayra on the Parana. In the nineteenth century the trade in
Paraguay _mate_ seems to have suffered less than the tobacco trade
from the policy of isolation adopted by the Dictators of Paraguay. The
descriptions given by Mariano Molas, Demersay, and others, show that
the business continued fairly actively. It even extended northward,
and reached as far as the Rio Apa. Villa Concepcion became a rival
_yerba_ market to Villa Rica. The monopoly exercised by the Paraguay
Government, however, and the restrictions put upon the navigation
of the river, led to the development of the _yerba_ industry in the
eastern Misiones on the left bank of the Uruguay. Itaquy served as
port of embarkation. In the last third of the nineteenth century the
yards moved from the left to the right bank of the Uruguay. Since
1870 the Parana has supplanted the Uruguay, and the _yerba_ trade has
concentrated at Candelaria. This meant the resurrection of Misiones.
In 1880 San Javier, on the Uruguay, worked up 800 tons of _yerba_,
and Candelaria more than 1,000 tons. The _yerbales_ round San Javier
began to run out, and the _yerbateros_ had to go further and further
up the Uruguay, toward the _yerbales_ of the tableland of Fracan and
San Pedro. Candelaria was mainly fed by the _yerbales_ of the right
bank of the Parana, on Paraguayan territory. Posadas has now succeeded
Candelaria, and the _yerbales_ that depend upon it are scattered over
both banks up the Parana.
The _yerbales_ of Misiones lie outside the tropical forest proper.
They are on the lower fringe of the pine-forest, and begin at some
distance from the river, with which they are connected by muddy and
difficult mule-tracks. _Mate_ can bear a cost of transport that would
be fatal to timber. At the point where these tracks reach the river,
the river-steamers stop at the foot of a shed that is almost hidden in
the foliage. These are the "ladders" of the _yerbales_.
Work in the _yerbales_ lasts six months out of the twelve. The pruners
who collect the bunches of leaves and bring them to the furnaces, where
they are dried, include Brazilians, Paraguayans and Argentinians. The
Brazilians go to the _yerbal_ to offer their services. The Paraguayans
and Argentinians, nearly all from the province of Corrientes, are
recruited at Posadas and the sister-town of Encarnacion, which is
opposite to it on the Paraguay bank.
The hiring at Posadas is done according to a traditional custom that
does not seem to have changed for more than a century. The description
given by D'Azara is not yet out of date. "The people of Villa Rica,"
he says, "depend mainly on being hired for the _yerbales_. The _yerba_
industry is sometimes profitable to the masters, but never to the
natives, who work cruelly without any profit. Not only are they paid
in goods for the _yerba_ they gather, but the goods are put at so high
a price that it is terrible. They have even to pay for the hire of a
bill for cutting the _mate_.... The natives contract as much debt as
they can before they start for the _yerbales_, and as soon as they have
done a little work, they say good-bye to the _yerbatero_, who loses
his money. And the _yerbatero_ in turn is exploited by the merchants
who control him." Before he starts for the _yerbal_, says Robertson,
the contractor (_habilitado_) gets an advance of four or five thousand
piastres. With this he hires about fifty workers, supplies their needs,
and gives them two or three months' pay in advance. The three essential
and inseparable elements of the _mate_ business are the _yerbal_ in the
forest, a shop at Posadas for hiring and paying wages in advance, and a
_yerba_ mill at Rosario or Buenos Aires.
* * * * *
The forestry industry in its various forms is not a definite occupation
of the soil by man. After having stripped the forest, it leaves,
and the land is open for colonization. Nearly everywhere there is a
complete separation between forestry and permanent colonization. They
do not employ the same workers; the wood-cutter (_hachador_) and the
charcoal-burner are not the men who clear the soil. The clearing away
of the stumps, which must precede agricultural work, is not their
business, but the work of diggers. At Tucuman, where most of the
workers in the cane-fields are Santiaguenos, Italians and Spaniards are
used for clearing the soil. The gangs of Mendocinos who go to cut crops
in the bush round Villa Mercedes will not sign on for clearing the
ground in order to plant lucerne.
[Illustration: LORETO. THE RIO PINTO IN THE DRY SEASON.
_One of the arms through which the flood of the Dulce flows._
Photograph by the Author.]
[Illustration: LA BANDA (SANTIAGO DEL ESTERO).
_Irrigated lucerne fields on the left bank of the Rio Dulce. Zone
of modern colonization: a contrast with the older farms of the
flood-zone._ Photograph by the Author.
PLATE X. To face p. 112.]
The history of forestry and colonization is one of the most diversified
chapters in the general economic history of modern Argentina. Round the
region of the Pampas, the first point where agricultural colonization
came into touch with the forest belt is the district of the older
colonies of Santa Fe. There it found the forestry industry already
long established, on the banks both of the Salado and of the Parana.
The export of timber and charcoal to Buenos Aires and the lime-kilns
of Entre Rios was at this time one of the few elements of economic
life which Santa Fe had preserved. The colonists did not enter the
forest, and did not mingle with the charcoal-burners, but they
profited indirectly from their presence by selling them maize. Later,
agricultural work spread over the Central Pampa and the province of
Cordoba, as far as the edge of the scrub in all parts of the prairie.
Wood-cutting is carried on there, on a small scale, everywhere, at Toay
as well as at Villa Mercedes and Villa Maria. The price of the wood he
sells is a small supplementary income to the farmer, and clearing the
soil helps to fill up his time during the dead season for agriculture.
The lands covered with brushwood remained for a long time at a lower
price than cleared land. They thus formed a sort of reserve which
partly escaped the speculations in land, and on which small owners
can find a footing more easily than on the Pampa. There is to-day a
movement of Santa Fecinos eastward and southward in the belt of scrub
to the south of Mar Chiquita along the line from Lehmann to Dean Funes.
The forest area of the Chaco, in northern Argentina, between the Andes
and the Parana, seems on the other hand to be intended for pastoral
colonization. In point of fact, the forest of the Chaco, as well as the
lighter scrub which is its southern extension, can be used for breeding
without preliminary labour. The Indians have fed cattle and horses on
it since the seventeenth century. The herds find food on every side,
both in the very numerous clearings (_abras_) which cross the forest
and in the forest itself, where the underwood and the herbaceous
carpet grow fairly thick beneath the scanty foliage of the mimosas and
quebrachos.
Over a good deal of the western Chaco pastoral colonization is earlier
than the forestry. In the district of Santiago del Estero the farmers
had advanced far beyond the wood-cutter and the railway; beyond the
Salado, almost as far as the existing line from Anatuya to Tintina,
where there are sheets and wells of fresh water. The old ranches go
as far as Alhuampa. The old pastoral population has taken very little
part in the forestry industry. It has been content to profit by it by
renting the scrub to the _obrajes_. It was a sheer gift to them, as
the felling of a few trees does not in the least lower the value of the
pasture. The forestry has not entailed any change in the ownership of
the land or in the breeding methods. The _obrajes_ are merely passing
guests whose traces are quickly obliterated.
In the eastern Chaco, however, the wood-cutters are real pioneers. It
is they who have made the conquest of the forest, often in direct touch
with the Indians, and the ownership of the land fell to them. They
have themselves played an essential part in the actual development of
breeding.
Leaving the river and travelling toward the forest on the west, one
first crosses a narrow belt of estates which form an almost unbroken
line from San Javier to Resistencia. These are old colonies, mostly
founded about 1870, at the same time as the first colonies in the
centre of Santa Fe. They had the advantage of being within reach of the
river-route, the network of railways that serves the colonies of Santa
Fe not being constructed until after 1880. They have not shown the same
capacity for extension as the colonies on the prairie, but they are
firmly rooted, on high and well-drained land, very different from the
clays of the Chaco, where the alluvial beds of the Parana alternate
with stuff that seems to come from the left bank. They grow flax,
earth-nuts, sugar cane, and cotton. Behind this slight agricultural
facade are the large estates of the factories. In the division of the
land the industrial firms sought the districts which were richest
in _quebracho_. Buyers of land who had no industrial plans--foreign
capitalists and Portenos--and who obtained large concessions in
little-known regions, sold back to the factories the plots where there
was plenty of wood, after they had taken stock of their property. They
converted the remainder into _estancias_ (ranches). The district to
the north of the Central Norte Railway, from San Cristobal to Tostado,
where the forest, which will presently yield to the plain, breaks
into patches and looks like a park, includes a number of these modern
_estancias_, in which lucerne is beginning to replace the grasses of
the natural vegetation.
[Illustration: QUEBRACHO TRUNKS LYING AT THE STATIONS.
_Eastern Chaco, on the Resistencia line (Santa Fe province). Here the
quebracho is exploited for tannic acid, not sleepers_.
Photographs by the Author.
PLATE XI. To face p. 116.]
When one passes to the interior, the pastoral industry at once assumes
a more primitive character. The _quebracho_ concerns themselves go in
for breeding, in order to make use of their large estates, when the
timber has been removed but the works have not yet been set up. They
need a large number of cattle, both for moving the timber and feeding
their workers, and they endeavour to meet their needs themselves. In
this district the forest is capable of feeding a far heavier herd than
is the more arid scrub of the eastern Chaco. There are often a thousand
head of cattle to 2,500 hectares. To the north and west of that part
of the forest where the big companies have taken over the whole of the
land, in the province of Chaco, a fairly large number of estates has
been created. Further still, on either side of the Bermejo, cattle
from Corrientes and the Paraguay have been put on the public lands
by men with no rights. As their future is uncertain, they cannot do
any expensive work, such as making wells, reservoirs, and enclosures.
Sometimes they are compelled by drought to fall back upon the river.
Conditions are quite different in the forests of Misiones. The damp
forest of Misiones does not lend itself to breeding. While the
forest-workers on the west of the Parana eat fresh meat, thanks to the
proximity of the breeders, in the _yerbales_ and _obrajes_ of Misiones,
the use of dried or "jerked" meat (_carne seca_), which is brought
some distance, has remained the common practice, as it is in most
parts of tropical America. On the other hand, there is now developing
in Misiones an agricultural colonization of an original kind, quite
distinct from the ordinary Argentinian type. This is because Misiones
is a province apart in Argentina. It really belongs, by its geological
structure and its climate, to the Brazilian tableland. The colonies
in Misiones are merely an extension into Argentine territory of the
great belt of colonies of southern Brazil, which stretches from the
neighbourhood of Santa Catalina and the Rio Grande do Sul to the River
Paraguay. The Brazilian type of colonization is based upon work with
the hoe, in clearings that have been made in the forest by the axe and
by fire. Ordinary farming would be impracticable between the large
stumps which the clearers have to leave in the ground, to rot there
slowly. It would, moreover, be useless, as the land, though rich in
humus, is light and aerated. The red soil, a decomposition-product
of the diabases which are at the root of all agricultural wealth
in southern Brazil, covers a great part of Misiones. The economic
inferiority of this agricultural colonization in the forest to the
Pampean type which has conquered the grassy plains of the Rio de la
Plata, is twofold. On the one hand, the surface that a man can develop
is very small. The plots of the Brazilian colonies are ten times
smaller than the average estate on the Pampa. On the other hand, it is
difficult to get about in the forest, and this hinders the export of
the produce.
The colonies in Misiones are still confined to the edge of the
great forest, into which they will advance as the agricultural
population grows. They form two groups: one on the river above Posadas
(Candelaria, Bonpland, Corpus, San Ignacio, and Santa Ana), the other
on the slopes of the hills, above the line from Posadas to Uruguay (San
Jose and Apostoles). Foodstuffs, tobacco, fowl and eggs, which they
now send by rail as far as Buenos Aires, are their chief resources.
As it is possible for them to reach the big markets of the Pampas,
by river or rail, they have a certain advantage over the Brazilian
colonies. On the other hand, the various elements of their population
are inferior. They are very mixed, comprising aboriginals--relics of
the ancient Indian or half-breed population of Misiones who have got
land but are in no hurry to cultivate it--Poles (grouped in a few
villages, such as Apostoles and San Jose), and German-Brazilians from
the left bank of the Uruguay. At the present time there is a constant
stream of German-Brazilians through the province of Misiones, to embark
at Posadas, sail up the Parana, and settle, further north, in Matto
Grosso. No doubt it would be possible to induce part of them to settle
on Argentinian territory by offering them suitable land.
These peasant clearers of the land rarely find means to sell their
timber. The tropical forest has an immense variety of species, but only
a few of these are of value. The _obrajero_ does not cut down the whole
forest; he chooses his victims. In the waste land of the colonist it is
by no means possible to utilize everything. Even in the area where the
forestry industry flourishes, trunks with no faults, felled in order to
make room for farming, are pitilessly burned and destroyed.
Yet the indirect advantages of the forestry to agriculture are
numerous. Just as in the whole of southern Brazil, it affords a good
market for agricultural produce. The crops from the colonies are stored
in the shops at Posadas, and from there they go to the _obrajes_ and
_yerbales_. In addition, the industry finds work for more men. On
the Rio Grande do Sul, and later on the Parana, the wages paid for
collecting _mate_ have long been the surest resource of the colonies,
and it is this that enabled them to subsist during the difficulties
of their early period. In Misiones the attraction of the _yerbales_
is not so strongly felt by the inhabitants. There are comparatively
few colonists who are willing to leave their plots and hire themselves
for distant work. The _yerbales_ find their recruits, not amongst
the immigrants from Europe, but amongst the ancient _pobladores_;
that is to say, men who hold land without a title, whose position was
recognized when the colony was formed--a floating population, not
deeply rooted in the soil.
Agricultural colonization in turn will react upon the forestry industry
in developing the cultivation of _mate_. Large plantations of _ilex_
have already been established above Posadas. Already they enter
the common life. They are scattered either over the estates of the
national colonies or over the larger estates of the richer colonists;
for planting demands a considerable expenditure. Some of them belong
to dealers who also work natural _yerbales_ elsewhere. They are, if
possible, set up in the forest, or at least on the fringe of it,
in order to have a good supply of wood to dry the leaves. Thus the
primitive industry of collecting _mate_ is undergoing transformation
while the natural growths are disappearing.